1. Chapter 8 has a massive impact on the rest of the novel and characters lives.
In this chapter both Estella and Miss Havisham make Pip aware of his status and as he gets older he wants to change alot and he starts to look down on people who as a child helped him alot and were very close to him. They both treat Pip in a terrible manor as Miss Havisham wants Estella to break Pips heart. Pips feelings for Estella also affects his adult life because he wants to impress her so by the way she treats him she also encourages him to want a better life and to become a gentlemen when he grows up.Estella is very mean to Pip during his childhood but this doent stop from loving Estella.
As a child Pip is very scared of Miss Havisham by the way she looks and the way she acts as she doesnt move from the one room and she is very stubborn because before she got married her fiance left her so she wants Estella to break Pips heart as Miss Havisham is very against love. From this chapter Pip seems to think that Miss Havisham is his benefactor but as the story goes on he finds out that a convict is his benefactor and not Miss Havisham.2. The story is looked at by both child Pip and adult Pip and he has very vivid memories of what happened to him as a child.
He remembers alot from his childhood and his relationship with Estella and he explains very well what happened when he first visited Manor House to see Miss Havisham and Estella. Most of his opinions havent changed towards other Characters apart from Joe who looked after him very well but as he got older he started to feel ashmaed of Joe even though Joe looked after him alot when he was a child. Adult Pip is very different to child Pip as when he is older he turns in to a bit of a snob as he has moved to London and has become a gentlemen.3.
Dickens explains very well about the social and historic settings as you can tell the class of each character by the way he describes them. You can tell Miss Havisham is upper class by the were she lives and the way she is towards other people such as Pip. Estella is also upper class you can tell this because she is very well spoken and aslo the way she acts. Pip is lower class as his family do not make much money and also were he lives and the way he is dressed and how he speaks.
Class is one of the main issues of “Great Expectations” as it is brought up alot during the novel. ‘she saw me looking at it and said ‘You could drink without hurt all the strong beer thats brewed there now, boy.’ ‘Ishould think i could, Miss’ i said in a shy way’. You can tell by this quote from the novel that both Pip and Estella do not share the same status by the way they talk to eachother as Estella talks to Pip in a very straight forward manner.
4. Dickens uses excellent words to describe either a character or a scene in th novel. “She was dressed in all white, a white veil dependant from her hair” Dickens describes very briefly what Miss Havisham was wearing but you also learn alot just by the way he has described the way she is dressed. ” I saw the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress” again he has put across that Miss Havisham is rotting away just like her dress.
Dickens describes Estella to be very stubborn especially towards Pip you can see this by the way she approaches him throughout the story. By the description of Pip you can tell he is a poor young boy you can tell this from the way his background is described and how he is dressed and his behaviour.5. Gothic fiction is used throughout this story mostly with the description of Miss Havisham.
“She had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes” just by this one sentence you can already picture Miss Havisham and how scary she must look. “The strangest lady i have ever seen, or shall ever see” this is also shows that Miss Havisham must be scary looking. “The figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk too skin and bone” by this you can see Miss Havisham is a very gloomy character. Dickens also describes the room in which Miss Havisham basically lives, this room also describes the charcter without telling what she looks like and it describes her personality also.
6. I think that the name Pip is used as pathos in the story because you feel sorry for him but at the same time the word Pip is used in other terms such as a small tiny seed and Pip is also a small young boy. The way Estella talks to Pip could also be used to create pathos because some of the things she says could be put across in a funny way. The way Pip is describing Miss Havisham in the story is another use of pathos also because he compares her to waxwork at the fair and skeletons.
7. In the novel you feel sympathetic towards Pip because of the way he gets treated not just by Estella but his sister treats him in a nasty manor also. Pips background also refelects on his character as he doesnt have much money because his parents died when he was a little boy so he lives with his sister Mrs Joe and Joe. Miss Havisham and Estella treat Pip very nastily this is were class and status comes into the story alot and this is were you start to feel very sorry to Pip as when he gets into The Manor House he cant seem to do anything right.
